Archive for March 8th, 2010
The Fun of Ichitaro on Windows
by claym on Mar.08, 2010, under Computers and Programming
Ichitaro doesn’t like running on English Windows. I’m sure this is the same for virtually every other non-Japanese language setting but I finally had enough. I wanted to be finally be able to use MY computer to open the Ichitaro files I sometimes received from teachers and I was determined to get it to work.
I found that if I switched the non-Unicode language setting in Windows to Japanese it would work. Yay! BUT… This is a system wide change. No any non-Unicode program I have things it should be Japanese and that also messes with the display of certain things like the command prompt (which will use a Yen sign instead of a \). I could change it back when I was done, but each time you alter this system setting it requires a reboot. There must be a better way, I thought.
It turns out there IS a better way, but it’s still not perfect. There’s a program called Microsoft AppLocale (http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/apploc.mspx). This application will let you point it to an EXE and pick the language it should run it. It even will let you make a shortcut to always run the application through AppLocale. No reboots, not side effects. The only annoyance is that it doesn’t install properly under Windows 7 (You need to tell it to use backwards compatibility) and it will prompt you even when using a shortcut to remind you that AppLocale is just a “temporary solution”. Hopefully it’s right, and Microsoft will release a more robust system level update that will allow it to handle such situations on its own, or software manufacturers will start releasing software in Unicode.
